They hate children, don't they?

Canadian Cynic: The Catholic Problem - pretty shaved ape has posted a cohesive and comprehensive round-up of the latest disclosures about the Catholic Church enabling and seemingly sanctioning the violence that members of the Roman Catholic clergy (or non-clergy under their authority) directed towards thousands and thousands of children in Ireland, as well the exalted bishops who rationalize somehow that it's not really evil but actually tolerable if you're a "good Catholic."

Go read it.

The only element missing, as the coup-de-farce would be the pope granting a MASSIVE pardon to the sexual predators who "regret" their actions.

As for those malevolent Catholic Church clergy and administrators who derived moral satisfaction from the savage physical, emotional and spiritual violence they inflicted upon the children in their care, they were merely enforcing religious doctrine, that is, they were faithfully "following orders".

"... self-serving secrecy ..."

If you guessed that this post will address the Catholic Church and its attitude towards pedophile priests, you are partly correct.

In Ireland, there is so much more behind that fundamentalist and dogmatic religious "self-serving secrecy".

Victims of child abuse at Catholic institutions in the Irish Republic have expressed anger that a damning report will not bring about prosecutions.

The report, nine years in the making and covering a period of six decades, found thousands of boys and girls were terrorised by priests and nuns.

Government inspectors failed to stop beatings, rapes and humiliation. ... The victims were among 35,000 children who were placed in a network of reformatories, industrial schools and workhouses until the early 1990s.

As always, the Catholic Church is God's bully when it claims to defend the interests of the fertilized ovum, the zygote, the embryo and the fetus. And after women have been forced to carry their unwanted pregnancies to term, a number of clergy have persevered in tormenting, beating and violating these children to remind them that the Church believes they are no longer the innocent unborn, but the product of their parents' sins and should be made to suffer for them.

More news stories about the Commission of inquiry into the physical, sexual and emotional abuse of Irish children in reform schools, orphanages and hospitals run by the Catholic Church.

“We believe this bill is designed to bankrupt the Catholic Church."

Because, of course, that would be the one and only reason that a woman or a man who was sexually abused by a priest would want to initiate a lawsuit against a Church who silenced any attempt to hold their clergy or religious institution accountable for the great harm that was caused.

Perhaps, had the Church Fathers had responded in a humane, caring and responsible manner when children and parents approached them with evidence of these transgressions, instead of sweeping these crimes under the carpet, such legislation would not now been necessary.

A friend recently lent me a novel by Ariana Franklin, Mistress of the Art of Death. The author admits that she allowed an anachronism or two to slip in so that the narrative flowed.

The basic historical background is rigorous however, and there is one issue critical to the storyline that returns in Franklin's subsequent novel, The Serpent's Tale. The Catholic Church maintained then that members of its clergy were not obliged to obey man-made laws. This was the question that divided Henry II and Thomas Beckett:

"The clergy have Christ alone as King and under the King of Heaven; they should be ruled by their own law."

Centuries later, the Catholic Church perseveres in following medieval principles and maintaining that its ecclesiastical rules are the only ones that are God-given and irrevocable.

Un grand merci to JJ who blogged the news item quoted.

I wanted to entitle this blog post “Catholic priests molest little girls” ...

... when unrepentant old hippie did her blogpost about the batshit craziness of Blob Blogging Wingnut. I felt that I should blog about priests who sexually abuse female children.

Pope Benny Ratzo recently pontificated upon the harm done to children. It was not an apology for the centuries of tacit complicity between the clerics who abuse children and those who don't. It was not an admission the Catholic Church and its refusal to be accountable for the actions of abusive priests, its hypocrisy that denies and evades responsibility, and its arrogance are morally bankrupt.

While the focus remains fixed on priests (men) who abuse boys, it is likely that more girls than boys have been subjected to sexual exploitation by members of the RCC clergy.

Why would a church committed to purging from its ranks potentially predatory clerics focus its scrutiny on prospective priests with homosexual tendencies? That would imply two things we know not to be true: that the crisis in the church was triggered by sexual orientation, not by sexual misconduct and its coverup, and that the victims of rapists in Roman collars were all male.

Why would a church that claims to be intent on healing and reconciliation effectively erase the traumatic experiences of so many women and girls? Kathleen M. Dwyer thinks she knows why. ''In order to be successful in blaming gays, the hierarchy knows that the sexual abuse of girls must be swept into invisibility and be internalized in the culture as a rare exception," said Dwyer, herself victimized by a priest.

''I can only assume that women victims simply aren't newsworthy, regardless of what we have to say," concluded a dispirited Ann Hagan Webb, a psychologist who heads the New England chapter of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Fifty percent of the organization's members are women. ''The Vatican's decision to ban gay men from the priesthood is an insult to survivors of either gender. The vast number of girls and women abused by priests underscores the obvious, that banning gay priests will not solve the problem of sexual abuse in the church."

Thousands of women who have been sexually abused by priests in their childhood have remained invisible and silent, some by choice, some shamed by RCC doctrine that implies that as little girls, their 'female allure' made priests commit these sins and thus, are the cause of their own abuse.

That's quite the racket you have there, Benny Ratzo.